That would be an interesting exercise for someone to put together. List attendance, viewership of ISU and compare to other schools in a blind comparison - you're probably right it would probably surprise a lot of people.
This is a copy and paste of something I posted awhile ago. I think they were based on 2019 numbers. For some reason the 2021 numbers aren't up yet.
Here are some numbers I crunched concerning attendance.
We would rank 8th in attendance in a 16 team Big 10
We would rank 2nd in attendance in a 16 team PAC 12.
We rank 21st nationwide in football attendance . Iowa is 20th. We out-attend 16 of the current 26 teams in the Big ten and Pac 12.
Versus big ten teams:
10% more than Purdue
45% more than Indiana
45% more than Illinois
58% more than Maryland
59% more than Northwestern
99% more than Rutgers (read twice as many)
Versus Pac 12 teams
11% more than Oregon
21% more than Arizona State
21% more than Colorado
51% more than Arizona
61% more than Stanford
28% more than Utah
36% more than UCLA
40% more than California
84% more than Oregon State
And 109% more than Washington State
So can it be assumed that Iowa State has an equivalent percentage more fans than these? If so then Iowa States streaming value is more valuable than all of them.
And let's say you're starting the Big ten from scratch. Can someone make a case that Northwestern by itself is somehow much more valuable than Iowa State is? Yeah they're in the Chicago market but nobody cares. In other words Chicagoinites aren't watching. Rutgers? Same
Since cable isn’t as big a deal now and since streaming is it would seem that the number of fans a team has is the more important thing these days.
Also...Iowa State is 3rd in national women’s basketball attendance. Iowa is 10th. They would be 1st in the big 10. And ahead of Iowa as they would be 2nd.
Iowa State is 15th in national mens basketball attendance. Iowa is 23rd. They would be 6th in the big 10. Iowa would be 8th.